Page 8 of How To Plot a Payback

I drop my eyes to prevent him from reading my very thoughts and soul.

“Idiots,” he hisses. “It’s TV. There’s always room to grow.”

I get it now. I get why Carrie Suja is currently enjoying the winding mountain roads of Colorado in a camper van named Solo.

“I’ve lived long enough, though. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s TV. I sense change coming. And we need an outsider who can ignite that change. Frankly, I need you.”

I look around and for one wild moment the question crops up. Did he know I was going to be here tonight? Even I wasn’t sure until the last moment I was going to be here tonight! A creeping suspicion follows that if Mr. Goodwin wanted to find me, he’d find me. By knowing about my whereabouts and finding me at this party. By slipping a pig’s head into a cake for me with icing that says, “Work for Me, or Else.” One way or another.

As if to answer my unspoken question, Goodwin adds, “I have a couple other names, but rather fortuitously, I found you here first. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to just nail down the position tonight.”

Tonight.

He wants a decision tonight. As in . . . right now.

Well.

It’s simple, isn’t it?

It is impossible to turn down.

Absolutely impossible.

Nobody in their right mind would turn down this opportunity. Everyone in Hollywood would give anything to work for Goodwin. And of course, I have Paula to thank. For giving me that ticket and dragging me here.

I suck in a breath and flick my eyes over.

Paula’s on her toes now, craning her neck with her hands on the shoulders of—is that Melissa Rauch?—as they all peer through the window.

I at least have to try.

“It’ll be a challenge jumping in from the outside. I could use somebody in that room on my side.”

Something in his eyes flashes, as though he sees my challenge . . . Does he like my bravado?

Desperation courses through my veins with the urgent plea he likes my bravado.

“You want her?” He tosses a head Paula’s direction.

“She’s been in the business fifteen years.” I pause, throwing out one more bone. “Came up with Cedar Christie’s character herself.”

Zing.

The crease between his brows eases to a sliver.

Everybody loves Detective Phillips’s charming, comedic supporting character. Cedar Christie is the sidekick who brought new life to the show’s fifth season.

I can see his tongue sliding over his teeth as he considers my proposition.

He wears the same expression as that guest serial killer we had on last season.

Prodigious thinking.

Lining up the dominos of how things will play one by one and then mentally flicking the first domino and watching how it all falls.

Apparently he likes what he sees, because he blinks and pivots his attention back to me.

“She’ll come on as staff writer. If she’s worth her salt, she’ll move up the ranks as people die off.”